EXCLUSIVE: Irish singer JC Stewart gave up his family’s grocery business to be a musician

Stewart has been gradually making his mark with his brand of emotional break-up ballads. Photos: Warner Music

A few years ago, Irish singer-songwriter JC Stewart was all set to inherit his family business – a thriving supermarket in Magherafelt, Northern Ireland, also named JC Stewart.

But he had other plans for himself. He wanted to pursue music.

“My dad wanted to retire and it was either I started to take on the business or we sold the business. I wanted to do other things, and he wanted me to go do other things as well, ” the 23-year-old recalls in an interview with StarLifestyle via video call.

The supermarket was eventually sold off to a new owner in 2015.

But Stewart doesn’t view his decision as running away from the family business. In fact, the singer, born John Callum Stewart, decided to use the supermarket’s name as his stage name.

“The way I look at it, the supermarket was my family business. It was in our family for about 130 years. Me taking the name was like me taking on the family business but just in a different way.”

He has fond memories of the supermarket. “I was there every day as a kid. I’ll go see my dad at the shop. It was the centre of my life when I was growing up.”

Stewart adds he worked at the supermarket for a while but says he wasn’t of much help.

He left his hometown Magherafelt, Ireland for London five years ago to pursue music.

“It was my first job. My dad fired me from it. I used to work in the checkout and I was bad at it. I would always give people the wrong change, ” he says with a laugh.

Indeed, his talents lie in music.

Stewart, who is now based in London, has been pursuing music professionally for about five years now. He is gradually making his mark with his brand of emotional break-up ballads.

Lying That You Love Me and I Need You To Hate Me, both released at the peak of the pandemic, have been steadily gaining traction.

“I’m growing into writing happier songs. But being a more inexperienced songwriter, I find the best way to connect with people is through writing sad songs. That’s how I could hit people, ” he talks about his penchant for writing melancholic numbers.

“And it’s what I want to say as well. It’s like therapy to me. It connects to me the most and it’s the type of music I love listening to.”

While his four-track debut EP When The Light Hits The Room – released Nov 6 – continues to tap into the melancholy, Stewart points out there’s a glimmer of happiness in its last track, Hard To Believe.

“The whole EP is about the search for happiness. When I first moved to London to do music, I had an idea of what was going to make me happy. I wanted to be a rockstar, I wanted to go to parties, I wanted to fly all over the world and have success and money. But the closer I got to all that stuff, the less happy that made me, ” he explains..

“The last track is essentially a happy song because I finally found what made me happy. It’s simplicity; it’s love; it’s friends; it’s family; it’s my girlfriend. It’s the things that were always there for me. Doing this job and having the people who love me around me, that’s what makes me happy.”

Stewart shares he had the realisation when the pandemic struck. The songwriter was about to enter the next stage of his career, his first headlining tour around Europe. Instead, he found himself on the plane back to Ireland, spending two months with his family.

“When I was home in Ireland, I moved back with my parents for the first time in five years. My whole family was there.”

Like many of us whose lives have been turned upside down due to the pandemic, Stewart took a step back and reassessed his priorities in life.

“We went to our family farm for the first time since we were kids. We were running the fields with our dogs, we were cooking. That’s when I figured out that that’s what I wanted.”